Charleston Leader

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, addressed the weekly Senate Republican Leadership press conference today. She discussed oversight findings from the EPW Committee revealing that a $50 million grant was awarded by the EPA through the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to "Climate Justice Alliance," a group allegedly involved in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic activities.

Senator Capito highlighted concerns about the allocation of funds: “The money is from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. So in the name of green, and environmental justice, there's over $40 billion that is going to be granted out through the EPA. So, with this great research that was done, what was discovered [was] that in December, the EPA granted $50 million to an organization called Climate Justice Alliance. So we went to the website of Climate Justice Alliance. This is what we found on the website that our taxpayer dollars are going to organizations such as this. This, at the bottom, is a picture of the bulldozer that went through the fence when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. They have a rendering on their website; it says ‘Decolonize Palestine’ and it has a picture of that same bulldozer going through that fence.”

Capito further criticized groups receiving IRA funds for promoting anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda: “If you dig deeper. They want to defund the police, defund the military, either them or their affiliates want to have very radical, drastic initiatives that I think are anti-American, and they're certainly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. So, the Biden administration doesn't seem to care. $50 million dollars in December; who knows how much more in the future and other like groups because there are other associated groups with this group…all they care about is the mission, the climate mission, no matter what radical ideas are associated with these groups.”

She questioned whether such funding truly serves environmental purposes: “So then you could ask yourself, is this group really going to be funding cleaning up water and cleaning up soil and cleaning up air? Or are they going to be funding things like protests they had in Hart [Senate Office Building] just several weeks ago where several of them were arrested? So follow the money. We're going to be doing that in the Environment and Public Works Committee. That's where this derivation was from. I find it rather startling to me that the EPA and administration are not doing any better research as to where our American taxpayer dollars are going.”

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